The rain-fueled flooding in southern Brazil state of Santa Catarina has brought disaster declarations in six municipalities: Gaspar, Rio dos Cedros, Nova Trento, Camboriu, Benedito Novo and Pomerode
The flooding has left more than 54,000 people displaced, civil defense officials said in a statement

After flying over the affected zone Tuesday, Sen. Ideli Salvatti described the situation as a “true catastrophe,” Agencia Brasil reported.

Salvatti said the army has provided two planes to carry mattresses, clothes, food and a health team
Forecasters said rain would probably continue until Wednesday in Santa Catarina.

“Whoever doubted that a black man could be elected to be president of the United States now knows that it is possible. And it is possible because it is a democratic country, in which society can express itself,” President Lula said.

He urged Obama to seek a stronger and deeper relationship with Brazil and other Latin American and African nations. President Lula
added that Obama administration should end its embargo on Cuba, saying the embargo is unjustified to continue.
He also wished that Obama’s victory could contribute to peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestine.

“Among the benefits that this crisis will bring is that it will elect Obama president of the United States, it will elect a black. What’s not small potatoes,” the Brazilian president said.

He added, “Maybe there aren’t that many ideological and conceptual differences between Democrats and Republicans but from a symbolic point of view it’s a serious stuff that this world has elected a lathe operator for the second time in Brazil, elected an Indian in Bolivia, a bishop in Paraguay, and a black in the United States,” said the president talking  off the cuff.

President da Silva was talking in São Paulo, during an award ceremony for the most admired Brazilian companies

Lula complained that it took the American government one year to take steps against the crisis. Once again he blamed the US and its casino mentality for the global financial crisis. The president called the economic disaster fruit of “irresponsible gambling.” 
He attacked a handful of rich countries and speculators for triggering the financial crisis by making the world into a gigantic casino

Lula used the award ceremony to thank Roger Agnelly, chairman of the mining giant Vale for having made it public that his company will keep its commitment to continue its planned investments in Brazil.

He also gave assurances that his administration will not make cuts in the resources allocated for infrastructure: “Not even one real will be taken from any project belonging to the PAC (Growth Acceleration Program) in this country,” he promised

The Brazilian president stated that the financial help promised by the United States and European governments should produce results pretty soon. Lula reasoned that’s not possible that US$ 3 trillion injected in the international financial system won’t produce some positive effect.

Lula believes that Brazil has everything to overcome the crisis, because of what he sees as three favorable characteristics: “Our system is more serious than the international financial system; we have a financial system, with a public face rarely found in other countries; and our domestic market has room to grow.”

Japan’s top steelmakers in the deal are Nippon Steel, JFE Steel, Sumitomo Metal Industries, Kobe Steel and Nisshin Steel which will join forces with Itochu and Posco, from South Korea, to come to the agreement so the group can collectively take a 40 percent stake in Namisa.

The deal, which is still being finalised, is seen as one of the biggest investments in natural resources by steelmakers.

“This is a landmark transaction and the first example of an investment in the iron ore business by a consortium consisting of both Japanese and Korean companies,” Itochu said in a statement.

Namisa, a unit of Companhia Siderurgica Nacional, is expected to produce about 18 million tonnes of iron ore in 2009, and aims to increase annual output to 38 million tonnes in 2013, Itochu said.

The Japanese and South Korean steelmakers are also preparing to conclude separate long-term iron ore purchase agreements with Namisa.

They expect to start buying iron ore from Namisa in 2009, purchasing up to 13.7 tonnes a year after Namisa’s expansion is completed in 2013, Itochu said.

The prices of iron ore and other raw materials have been rapidly rising on the back of growing demand in emerging economies.

Brazilian law allows candidates to put any name on the ballot as long as it isn’t offensive. This time around, a number of candidates chose “Barack Obama.” Some used the name Bin Laden, and others resorted to French soccer player Zinedine Zidane. No one was known to use the name of McCain, the Republican presidential candidate

But if Brazilian could vote for US president, Democrat Barack Obama would win by a landslide, according to a survey that was part of a global poll.

In fact if the whole world could vote, Obama would win by a landslide in all but one of the 17 countries polled by Reader’s Digest magazine.

The odd one out was the United States where Republican John McCain was preferred by a narrow margin, the magazine said in an article posted on its website.

However, the surveys - with about 1000 participants in each country - were conducted from June 2 to July 7 and since then Senator Obama has been leading in opinion polls in the US.

Some Brazilian candidates mistakenly think they can attract more voters by using the quirk in the ballot law, said political scientist David Fleischer said.

“They are opportunists trying to use popular figures to their advantage,” Fleischer said. “It doesn’t work.”

A victory against Cuba on Wednesday in the team’s final group match will guarantee Brazil advances to the next round. The top two teams in each of the four groups advance.

Two-time defending champion Spain leads Group D. Its next match is Monday against the Czech Republic in Rio de Janeiro
 
Facts about Futsal

1. Futsal is played in two 20-minute periods on a surface about the size of a basketball court.
2. Brazil and Spain are the only nations to have won the futsal World Cup in the five tournaments played since 1989

Every year penguins make their way north from the colder waters near to Patagonia in search of food.
But the numbers and distances the penguins have travelled this year have amazed the authorities.

No one is really sure what has caused the Brazilian exodus – at the moment, the focus is on saving the penguins rather than explaining how they have ended up in this predicament – but the prevailing theory is that changes in water temperatures have caused confusion on the migratory routes. Fish like cold water and so South American penguins in search of food usually ride the cold Malvinas Current north, gobbling as they go. When they hit the warmer Brazil Current, they know it’s time to stop and head back. Only this year, the Malvinas Current has been warmer than usual, meaning the penguins couldn’t appreciate the difference.

“The penguins didn’t realise when they hit the meeting point so they forged on, and, of course in warmer waters there’s not as much fish, and then suddenly the birds were like ‘Uh-oh! We don’t have any more food’,” explained Ms Ruoppolo. “If they don’t have enough to eat, they lose blubber, then they start to feel cold in the water and that’s when they come ashore to get warm.”

Backing up this theory is the fact that most of the penguins that have got lost are juveniles, embarking on their first migration without a wealth of life experience to fall back on when faced with uncharted waters. However more analysis is needed before making a definitive conclusion. “This is extreme, but we don’t have statistics on the number of penguins and the ocean temperatures,” Jose Marengo, a Brazilian climatologist and a member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told the Washington Post. “Some of the most important uncertainties we have are on the oceanic currents.”

Other experts have suggested that melting ice in Antarctica has strengthened the Malvinas Current, which has then spirited away the younger, weaker and more vulnerable penguins. Another theory is that oil spills and over-fishing have combined to deplete the penguins’ fish stocks, forcing them to movefurther afield to feed.

Of the 1,000-plus penguins that have been recovered on land, about a fifth have died of starvation, exhaustion and other illnesses, and experts reckon they are just a fraction of the number of penguins that have perished out at sea.

Brazilian zoos have been inundated with the surviving birds, some of whom who have lost three-quarters of their body weight; are wracked with parasites and diarrhoea; sporting broken flippers, and severely malnourished. By 21 September, Niteroi zoo had received 556 penguins, compared with just seven in the whole of 2007. “We find lots of penguins here with catfish bones in them, which they normally don’t eat,” explained Thiago Muniz, one of the zoo’s vets. “That suggests they’re not finding their normal fish.”

Rescued penguins have been nursed back to health up and down the coast, first with rehydration fluids, before graduating to fishy milkshakes and then finally whole sardines.

Now Hundreds of penguins have been returned to their native territory in the south Atlantic ocean by an air force plane after being found along Brazil’s coast. It is an annual task for the Brazilian air force to help return penguins to their native territory but it seems this year they are coping with higher numbers of their unusual passengers.

Hundreds of penguins were flown this week in a Hercules plane down to the southern tip of Brazil, where they are being released into the ocean - while some are to return on a navy vessel.

Other birds that were exhausted by their long journey are for the time being staying behind to enjoy the hospitable climate of Bahia - a Brazilian state known for its beautiful beaches and sunny weather.

The field, nicknamed Anadarko, was discovered by a consortium of four companies, of which Woodlands-based Anadarko holds a 30 percent working interest in the field. Devon, with headquarters in Oklahoma City, has a 25 percent interest. The other two are India’s EnCana and South Korea’s SK Energy.

It is the first time a foreign company other than Brazil’s state-owned oil and gas giant Petrobras announced an oil discovery in the country’s pre-salt layer fields.

The Wahoo field, off the coast of Espirito Santo state, is 40 km away from the Jubarte mega oil field, which is Brazil’s first producing pre-salt well.

Oil reserves in the Wahoo field are yet to be estimated. Preliminary results at Wahoo indicate similar characteristics to the Jubarte well.

The capacity of the Jubarte field has been estimated at 4 billion barrels of crude.

The Ministry has drawn up a list of the 100 worst offenders and The Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra), was on top the list.

The six largest deforested areas since 2005 all belong to Incra, which distributes land to the poor. Together 223,000 hectares (550,000 acres) of the world’s largest rain forest were destroyed on those six properties, as settlers chopped down trees to sell and plant crops.

“We’re going to blow all 100 of them out of the water and then some,” an irate Environment Minister Carlos Minc told a news conference, referring to plans to sue them.

Releasing the list of illegal loggers, he said the environment ministry will bring criminal charges against all of them.

Official data showed on Monday a renewed increase in the rate of deforestation. Some 756 square kilometers (292 square miles) were chopped down in August, twice the rate in July, the National Institute of Space Studies (Inpe) said.

“It was a terrible result,” Minc said, blaming expanding cattle and farm activity, as well as land theft through the falsificaiton of property titles.

Greenpeace has accused Incra officials of illegally handing over rainforest to logging companies and creating fake settlements to skirt environmental regulations.

But Incra’s president, Rolf Hackbart, said all the areas cited by Mr Minc as being deforested by his department were areas legally settled between 1995 and 2002.

The environment minister said he would create an environmental police force with 3,000 armed officers to help combat deforestation.

Folha OnLine says police stopped 36-year-old Armando Clemente da Silva on Wednesday night and discovered he has been ticketed nearly 1,000 times since 2001, for speeding and running red lights, total 3.4 million reals (US$1.9 million). Folha OnLine reported Thursday.

Silva says he never received the tickets because he was always too busy to register the car in his name since he bought his current car. The car is worth about US$6,600. It was impounded and will be auctioned unless Silva comes up with the money he owes.